


Beyond Mirrors, Outside Clock

by alestar



Category: Naruto
Genre: International Fanworks Day 2015, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 11:49:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10684701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alestar/pseuds/alestar
Summary: I wasn't sure whether to classify this as a PWP.Sasuke nods, but as he moves to walk past her onto the seal, Sakura catches his arm.  She stares into his mismatched eyes, probably assessing him for old resolve.  "Sasuke," she says. "You’ve never seen Naruto like this."





	Beyond Mirrors, Outside Clock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mostlyharmless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlyharmless/gifts).



> 1\. This is a gift for [dustyhaulier](http://dustyhaulier.tumblr.com/), who left feedback on [a first time for everything](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3264854) (Haikyuu!!, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio) in celebration of International Fanworks Day 2015. Sorry it is 2 years late! The prompt was [Lover's Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP4pHeRSK1E) by TV on the Radio, which is possibly [the sexiest Naruto/Sasuke song in the world](https://play.google.com/music/preview/Twjhgztietbsgtwcxnx6jeywyvi). Bless you.
> 
> 2\. Thank you to [RC](http://rcmclachlan.tumblr.com/) for the beta! It should be noted that RC read it through a while ago, so it's possible I have committed a thousand errors since then, for which she cannot be blamed.
> 
> 3\. Here is the actual summary for this fic:

 

Despite everything they have experienced together, all those various heights of intensity, it somehow happens that Sasuke doesn’t see Naruto really lose control of himself until they’re in their late twenties.

It’s a Saturday afternoon in April, and Sasuke is sitting at a table in the Library of Aoyama, learning a dead language, when the white glow of a summoning seal appears on the tatami floor.  

As he watches, Sakura’s hazy outline condenses within the seal.  She is covered in scratches, coated in ashes and debris, and there's a bloody gash across her shoulder.  

She holds out a gloved hand, face grim, and says, “It’s Naruto.”

An orphanage that Naruto has been visiting over the last few years was demolished in an attack by a band of missing nin, she explains as she wraps binding around her arm with practice efficiency.  The attackers were neutralized, but by then Naruto was gone-- _gone_ , Sakura's word-- and now he is tearing the countryside apart.  There's a hospital fifteen minutes east, and Naruto can't be allowed to reach it.  

Sasuke nods, but as he moves to walk past her onto the seal, Sakura catches his arm.  She stares into his mismatched eyes, probably assessing him for old resolve.  

"Sasuke," she says. "You’ve never seen Naruto like this."

 

+

 

When Sakura and Sasuke materialize on top of a scroll spread out with four heavy stones, the tidal wave of killing intent hits Sasuke so suddenly he thinks for a moment he might be sick.  

Winds of red chakra whip around them, and Rock Lee stands nearby shielding them from flying rocks.

Sasuke finds Naruto at the bottom of a basin he has probably just ripped out of the earth.  The figure in the dirt is a bowed-over silhouette of deep red; his head is bowed, face and belly dragging against the ground, tongue lolling. Five tails whip around him, stabbing randomly into nearby rocks.  

Sasuke has never seen anything like it-- not in either of their battles at the Valley of the End nor elsewhere.  Sasuke can feel his fury.  Not Naruto’s determination, not Naruto’s strength, but real hate, real murder.

“Naruto!” he calls, and the beast looks up.

It opens its maw, and an unearthly scream of rage makes literal vibrations in the ground beneath them. It turns and bounds towards him, claw hands digging great gashes in the earth.  

Sasuke kneels, and in a second Naruto-- the Naruto thing-- is twenty feet away, demon eyes wide and enraged, and Sasuke slips in.

 

+

 

Sasuke has been in the sealing chamber of Naruto’s mind before, but only while the beast was at rest.  Now it is _different_.  

Sasuke finds himself in the long corridor in choppy, waist-deep water.  Red cords shoot out of the water to wrap around Sasuke’s arm, his shoulder, his neck, to drag him under.  Lightning flickers around Sasuke, and the cords break, and new ones shoot up to replace them.  Spikes of red chakra dance toward him down the corridor.  

But Sasuke holds up his hand, and the spikes of chakra retreat, driving outward in a slowly diminishing range until they withdraw back into the Kyuubi’s cell, battering petulantly at the bars.  Sasuke follows them, hand raised.

This is Sasuke’s birthright: the power to subdue the tailed beast.  

“Where is Naruto?” he asks. Kurama only growls.  

This is one of the downsides of the closeness that has grown between Naruto and Kurama over the years-- Kurama has started to take Naruto’s personal grievances more seriously.  And when a tailed beast takes something seriously, cities fall.  

Sasuke steps toward the cage, smoothing the seal on the lock.  “This isn’t what Naruto wants.”

Kurama makes a sound like a laugh, but it’s still wild, still violent and mean.

Suddenly Sasuke finds himself thrown forward against the bars, a body against his back and an arm around his throat.  

“Sasuke-chan,” Kurama growls, “maybe you don’t know what Naruto wants.”

Sasuke clamps his right hand around the arm at his throat.  “Naruto,” he says firmly.  

He tries to push off from the bars, but his whole frame goes still with shock at the nose pressing into his hair, behind his ear, teeth against his scalp, at the short grunt of laughter.  He hears Naruto’s familiar voice say, “No.”  

 

+

 

Sasuke’s doujutsu is unbreakable-- as absolute as the Infinite Tsukuyomi-- but Naruto’s chakra is immense even without the tailed beast, and the violent, erratic movements of his consciousness make his mindscape difficult to overlay, like riding a wild animal.  

The sealing chamber around them fragments and then dissipates like smoke, and they materialize on a cliff overlooking Konoha.

The village below them is in flames, and there are people screaming.  Buildings are exploding or collapsing at random.  Sasuke’s cloak is gone; the rest of his clothes are gone.  He can feel Naruto’s bare chest against his back.  

The earth shakes.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Naruto asks, voice raw.  He breathes roughly against the back of Sasuke’s neck.

Sasuke can see the Hokage Monument in the distance.  Naruto’s own face has been destroyed, and a jagged wound in the mountainside has taken its place.  

“Not anymore,” Sasuke says around the constriction of Naruto’s forearm.

He works to slow his breathing. Since the age of seventeen he’s garnered a lot of experience with soothing-- mostly from traveling with Juugo, who would wind up tight as a drum, eyes wide, breath coming in quick panicked puffs.

“Now our children live there," he says.

Naruto makes a sound of inarticulate anger.  He shoves Sasuke closer to the cliff, his own body following behind.  

“We don’t have any children,” he grinds out.  He pushes their bodies over into nothing.

 

+

 

They fight for control.  

Naruto manages to keep his hold on Sasuke, on his mindscape’s vision of his own body holding Sasuke tight by the throat, but Sasuke constructs around them the scene of the Hokage’s office: the door to the office, the sofa in the corner.  There is Naruto’s desk-- his computer, a steaming cup of instant ramen, a letter with Sasuke’s name on it.  His Fire Country sugegasa next to a line of framed photos of Naruto’s family and friends.

Then the building’s foundation rumbles, and a giant red tail crashes through the window, piercing the desk.

Everything in the room goes flying.  There's an eruption of glass shards and splinters the size of pencils-- they miss Sasuke's face but embed themselves in a neat line along Naruto's forearm, where it’s curled around Sasuke’s throat.  Naruto rolls sideways, pulling Sasuke with him, and the spiked end of the fox tail stabs into the wall near where they were standing.  

It’s in the shape of the fox’s tail, but it’s Naruto’s energy.

It is easier to believe that all the dark things in you come from somewhere else.

Sasuke closes his eyes and his grip on Naruto’s arm tightens.  They fade out and materialize again-- this time in one of Orochimaru’s hideouts.  It’s one of the old training pens, located on the northern border of Grass Country.  It is long-dissolved by now, but twelve years ago it was half ninja academy and half prison, teeming with society’s cast-aways: criminals, drug addicts, hapless lunatics, hungry children who had nowhere else to go.  

They’re in a large, concrete room, and people are fighting everywhere around them. That’s how Orochimaru’s pens worked-- the broken people of the world competing along lines of brutality until the cream rose to the top.  Sasuke in his adolescence was a missing-nin, a traitor, an avenger-- but Orochimaru’s world held such monstrosities that Sasuke was still able to define himself against it.   _Soft_ , Orochimaru called him then, while in Konoha they called him hard as ice.

“This is what _you_ wanted, isn’t it?” Sasuke says against the pressure on his throat.

In the corner of the large room, three men are holding another man down while a fourth pours water on him.  The man on the ground chokes and sputters, and the men around him laugh.  It wasn’t actually water in Sasuke’s memory-- but in Naruto’s mind he makes it water.

“Is this what you want?”

Naruto makes a sound of animal confusion.  The arm around Sasuke’s neck drops lower, curling around his chest and shoulder, protective instead of threatening.  

Sasuke lets go of the scene, and the world whites out, the sealing chamber begins to reform-- but in the tangle of thoughts Naruto’s will asserts itself, and suddenly they’re in another of Orochimaru’s hideouts.  

It’s one of Orochimaru’s tamer domiciles, one for actual living, designed for the upper echelon of Otogakure.  

It’s the home that Naruto found when they were seventeen, with Sakura and the Team 7 replacements; the first time that Sasuke set eyes on Kurama. They’re in one of the bedrooms-- what Naruto remembers and probably assumes Sasuke’s bedroom was like.  

Naruto pushes him face-down onto the mattress, then rolls on top of him.  All of his weight lands on his left arm across Sasuke’s shoulders, pinning him.  Sasuke gathers his chakra to push the other man off-- but he stills when Naruto rests his forehead against Sasuke’s bare skin, between his shoulder blades, panting heavily.  

Naruto rests there for a long moment, swallowing thickly between every few breaths.

The weight is centered against Sasuke’s left shoulder, so Sasuke doesn’t have much leverage, but he shifts, turning his head.  “Naruto--”

Naruto shoves him down again.  “Don’t look at me,” he says roughly.  

He moves to re-center his weight against Sasuke’s shoulders, and in shifting he pushes his hips against Sasuke, and the hard line of his erection settles against the juncture of Sasuke’s legs.  His hips thrust once before going still, and Naruto curves, burying his face in Sasuke’s hair with a long exhale.  

Suddenly it's there, in the room with them-- with Naruto's rage cooling, he can feel the other disasters boiling there, incipient.  He can feel the magma of Naruto's desire.

Sasuke is wearing pants, he realizes dimly, though from the feel he thinks Naruto isn’t.  Sasuke can feel Naruto’s bare stomach against his back; he can feel Naruto’s tight breathing against the back of his ear.  He is caught off guard by the feel of Naruto’s crude hunger in the shared psychic space-- the sounds of it-- and suddenly Sasuke wants that, wants it so much.  Wants Naruto to pull down the waist of his imaginary pants and fuck him in this imaginary room.

Sasuke knew only abstractly, anecdotally, that this Naruto existed. He spent years of his life trying to get Naruto kill him, and the other man never consented to wield his whole fury against him. Sasuke knows that Naruto’s convictions aren’t as absolute as they seem; he can feel Naruto’s vulnerabilities like a wound, sometimes, like a sprained limb that won't bear weight.  But when he thinks of Naruto, he thinks of his laughter, his insight, his awkwardness, his subterranean sadness. He does not think of Naruto vibrating with such volatility between selves.

Even with all their history, all those various heights of intensity, it somehow happens that Sasuke doesn’t feel Naruto on top of him, scrabbling at his self-control, trying to remember himself, face buried in Sasuke’s hair, until they’re in their late twenties.  

“Naruto,” Sasuke says.

“ _No_ ,” Naruto says again, but this time his voice sounds broken, upset-- more like the normal Naruto. The moment’s animal rage rapidly cooling into anger: into the petulance comprised of a decade of petty compromises.

Sasuke pushes against Naruto’s hold again, and after a second of resistance Naruto sits back, left arm pulling heavily away.  Sasuke turns and looks up at him, lying on his back with Naruto crouched on his thighs.

They are both dressed, Sasuke finds.  

Naruto is wearing orange shorts and a simple white t-shirt-- not his shinobi gear, not his Hokage robes, but a plain t-shirt with jagged rips that look like claw marks down the left front.  The outline of his erection is clearly visible.  His right arm ends just below his bicep, even though in the real world he’s been using his false arm for a decade.

His right eye is black as coal with a red iris-- but as Sasuke watches him the foreign colors withdraw, leaving two blue eyes downcast, half-lidded with shame.

Sasuke puts his hand on Naruto’s left thigh, thumb stroking below the edge of his orange shorts.  Once again the world around them bleaches out.

 

+

 

Sasuke pours two cups of tea and puts them on a tray; he carries them to the balcony and opens the sliding door with his foot.  Naruto turns away from the vista and looks at him, face pale, wearing his torn t-shirt and orange shorts.  Sasuke is wearing a dark blue yukata.  This is his apartment in Aoyama.  

Sasuke sets the tray of tea on a small side table.  “You okay?” he asks.  

Naruto looks away, mouth pinched.

Aoyama is not much more than a collection of temples settled deep in the foothills of Oni Country, with the great Library and several dormitories set in the middle; the skyline is mostly clouds hung low on steep green hills.  Naruto stares at it for a long moment.

“Yeah,” he says at last.  "I think I hurt Shikamaru.”

“He’s fine. Sakura made sure everyone got to the hospital.”

Naruto’s eyes slide closed.  He rubs at the back of his head with his one remaining hand.  “Thank you,” he says lowly.

Sasuke makes a noncommittal sound and sits down in one of the two folding chairs set out for them.  

“This hasn’t happened in a long time. Not since I was a kid.”

“When you were fighting Orochimaru; he taunted you about me.”  Sasuke pushes a cup of tea into Naruto’s hand, and Naruto takes it, opening his eyes. “Sakura told me.”

Naruto looks down at the tea, then at Sasuke.

When he was a teenager, Naruto’s face showed so much of his emotions. Now he has a politician’s face-- inoffensive; built for showing cheer or, at worst, fatigue.  But when he speaks, his voice is often heavy with self-recriminations.

The truth is that a man asks for trouble when he resolves to never go back on his word.  Eventually he comes to cross-purposes.

After a long moment, Naruto’s mouth tilts in a faint smirk. “The last time was about Hinata, actually.”  He shakes his head.  “You arrogant bastard.”

Sasuke returns the smile and shrugs a shoulder.  

“Next time definitely goes to me.”

At that, Naruto’s mouth twists, and he puts his tea back on the tray without tasting it. He turns to look back out over the railing, the fingers of his left hand combing over the rips in his shirt over his heart.  “There is no next time. This won’t happen again.”

“Why?” Sasuke asks. He leans back in his chair, tips his head against the wall of the building.  The left sleeve of his yukata brushes the ground.  “Because you said so?  Because that’s your way of the ninja?”

“Fuck you.”

Sasuke snorts. “In any case, your strategy doesn’t seem to be working.”  

“Like you’ve never done anything you _regretted_ ,” Naruto bites, bending his head down.  

The comment doesn’t hit its mark-- Sasuke made his peace with regret a long time ago-- but it isn’t Naruto’s style. Tear a giant hole in the ground, rough up Sakura, knock Shikamaru around, throw the past in Sasuke’s face: it is all out of character.  Naruto feels it.  He reaches up to rub roughly at his face.

“Now that you’re Hokage,” Sasuke says, “you’re not running any missions, and you don’t have any release valve.”  He turns his own teacup nimbly in his hand.  “The pressure just builds and builds.”

When Naruto glances back down at him, gaze shuttered, Sasuke adds, “We never did get to have that fight you wanted when we were younger.”

A flush moves across Naruto’s face.  “You wanna fight?” he says, voice low.

Sasuke nods slowly.  

Naruto watches him neutrally for a long moment.  A corner of his mouth tightens, and Sasuke is suddenly very sure he’s biting it from the inside.

A politician’s face.

Then he looks away again and laughs.  “I’ll definitely kick your ass,” he says. “That’s for sure!  But for now we need to make sure everything’s okay at the hospital.”

“Sakura can handle it.”

Naruto shakes his head.  “The orphanage--”

“No,” says Sasuke. “Now.”  He pushes to his feet, and Naruto turns to face him.  Sasuke smirks and gestures at his yukata.  “I should probably change first.”  

“This isn’t the time,” Naruto says firmly.

“Time doesn’t exist in the Tsukuyomi.”  Sasuke raises an eyebrow.  “You remember that none of this is really happening, right?”  

To make his point, Sasuke tosses his teacup over the railing.  Naruto watches as it falls and shatters against the rock path.  Then he looks back at Sasuke, lips parted, eyebrows drawn together.  After a moment, he asks, “Doesn’t that give you an advantage?”

“We can probably think of some kind of handicap, if you want. You can pick the place.  We'll let you lead.”

“We can’t fight in the Tsukuyomi,” Naruto says, “you’ll run out of chakra.”  

Sasuke’s mouth curves.  “You’re my battery.”

Naruto gives a short, upset laugh.  He looks out into the distance again, keeping his back to the railing.  He shakes his head and says, “Uh, I don't..."

Sasuke steps toward Naruto.

He walks a thin line-- he does have the advantage, and he won’t force it.  But he’s not one to indulge pretensions.  He doesn’t want to coerce Naruto.  He wants to provoke him.

Naruto watches him warily.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sasuke is dimly aware of _some_ time passing; Naruto’s body is immobilized, and it is beginning the slow process of healing itself from the damage of Kurama’s unchecked power.  When Naruto wakes up, he’ll be in a lot of pain; until then, Sasuke will filter out the sensations while Rock Lee and Naruto’s ANBU guard keep watch over their inert bodies.

Sasuke looks past Naruto at the hazy skyline of Aoyama, his temporary home-- this place of reverence and scholarship where still in the green undergrowth the same barbarities of nature take place.  He can feel the coiling tension in the body in front of him.  He can feel the press of Naruto’s own psyche; he can feel Naruto’s fear and resentment and want.  

“You couldn’t save me from having regrets,” Sasuke says quietly.  “But you saved me from going past the point of no return.”  He looks back at Naruto, expression neutral.  “I can do that for you.”

Naruto’s face changes, shifting from the wariness to some softer thing.  Sasuke once identified that look as pain-- which he identified in his youth as extending from Naruto’s confusion-- but he has since learned, in the last decade and a half, that it is Naruto’s look of love.

Sasuke feels his own face soften.

Because this is the perfect heart of Uzumaki Naruto: You can solve all of his problems by shifting his attention to someone else's life story.

Sasuke steps into Naruto’s space and puts his hand on the railing, fencing in Naruto’s arm.  

Naruto swallows and says lowly,  “I don’t want to fight, Sasuke.”  

Sasuke leans in until his head is next to Naruto’s, bowed over his left shoulder.  He’s surprised to feel Naruto’s fingers on the side of his yukata.  

“Fine,” he says.  “Don’t fight.”

 

+

 

The scenery around them melts away, and nothing replaces it.  

Whiteness surrounds them, a blank background, a space with no context.  

Sasuke’s mind immediately begins to resist it, looking for patterns in the vastness, but he settles himself with vague shapes casting grey shadows in the distance.  

He looks down at himself and sees that he’s wearing standard-issue Konoha shinobi blacks. Sasuke is well aware of the disappointments that are constituent parts of Naruto’s compromises. But he knows without looking that the insignia on his back is the Uchiha crest and not the Uzushio swirl.

He can feel Naruto behind him.  Naruto’s head bows forward to rest against the back of Sasuke’s neck, and Sasuke feels him inhale and exhale deeply.  Naruto lifts his face, pressing his nose into Sasuke’s hair, and inhales again.

“Okay,” Naruto says.

Sasuke turns, and even as Naruto steps back he stays close, close enough that Sasuke can feel his warmth against his face.  He leaves his hand at his side, waiting.

Naruto touches the waist of Sasuke’s sweater. “Sasuke,” he murmurs-- not for any seeming purpose but to feel the name in his mouth.  How many times has he said it in a room by himself?  Naruto slowly tugs up the waist of the jounin sweater and touches warm fingers to Sasuke’s skin.  Now that they have resolved themselves to the event, the feel of his longing in the shared psychic space is palpable.  

Sasuke snorts softly, and Naruto looks up at him; when he sees Sasuke’s expression, his mouth curves in a smirk.  “What?” he says.  He continues to push his fingers under Sasuke’s shirt until his palm is flat against Sasuke’s waist.

“If this is your pace, I might actually run out of chakra.”

“Well,” says Naruto, shrugging a shoulder, “I’m your battery, right?”  

Then his smirk falls away. There was a span of three or four years, from the day Naruto found him at Orochimaru’s hideout until Naruto’s early twenties, when Sasuke rarely saw Naruto without this look of seriousness in his eyes-- eyebrows pulled low over bright blue eyes, mouth a somber line, watching Sasuke, waiting.  Is that when he picked up the habit for biting the inside of his mouth?  

But since their teenage years it’s been mostly laughing and relief and warm companionship, and Sasuke forgot, somewhere along the way, what it was like to feel that gaze on him.

Naruto says, “I want this,” as though he can hear Sasuke’s thoughts.

And suddenly Sasuke also feels deadly serious. He leans forward and captures Naruto’s mouth, and it’s easy-- their mouths are closed but soft, and Naruto tilts his head, and Sasuke can feel a thin line of wetness where their lips meet.  After all this time it seems impossible that it could be so easy.  With all their history, all those various heights of intensity--

Naruto’s fingers curl into Sasuke’s skin.  

His lips part, and his hand withdraws from Sasuke’s stomach; he slings an arm around Sasuke’s neck to draw him closer.  Sasuke feels the warm press of Naruto's tongue, and a low groan rumbles up from Sasuke's chest, and suddenly they’re in motion, breathing roughly against each other.  Sasuke pushes underneath Naruto's t-shirt and drags his nails along Naruto's back, and Naruto pulls back to bare his teeth, forehead pressed against Sasuke's cheek.

Then Naruto pushes at him, and Sasuke sinks to the ground with Naruto over top of him.  The motion reminds him of the hundreds of fights they’ve had in their lives-- messy, brutal, passionate-- how did Sasuke never realize how much their grappling was like _this_.  

The tension returns to all of Naruto’s movements.  His blue eyes narrow with single-minded focus as he pulls roughly at Sasuke’s clothes with his left hand, pushing up his shirt and unbuttoning his slacks with tightly-leashed movements, pushing him into the white featureless ground.  Naruto’s thoughts reverberate against Sasuke’s as indistinct phantoms, and Sasuke wonders what of his own thoughts Naruto can feel-- a thousand disconnected images of desire and urgency shining like light off of faceted glass.  

Naruto gets Sasuke's pants open and, preamble over, kneels over, taking Sasuke's erection into his mouth.  Sasuke gasps and lifts up on his shoulder.  

Naruto has his left leg pinned with his weight, and Naruto’s hand is fisted in the gathered fabric of Sasuke’s slacks halfway down his left leg, pushing him into the ground, while his hot, skilled mouth moves up and down Sasuke’s cock.  Sasuke wonders dimly if this is the kind of expertise one gets when he spends his formative years traveling with a pornographer-- though Naruto was never someone to learn from books--

The possibilities roll in front of Sasuke as Naruto’s throat closes over him.  Naruto with a secret life; Naruto visiting pleasure districts in his travels as a dignitary.  Naruto with the other guy, Sai, the replacement; Naruto with _Kakashi_.  Or the most likely scenario: Naruto at one in the morning, worn out, self-soothing with a clone on the beat-up sofa in his office.  Sasuke dips his head back, eyes closing, a strangled sound spilling out of his mouth.

He can feel Naruto growling against him, a soft vibrato along his length.  Naruto’s fingers are knotted around Sasuke’s slacks, in turns pushing him roughly into the white, blank ground, and then pulling him up into his hot throat.  Sasuke pants, willing himself not to come, though he knows, he can hear the sounds he’s making--  

“I’m going to--” he says, curling up on his shoulder.  It matters less, probably, in the space of the Tsukuyomi, but Sasuke says it out of habit.  

Naruto moans around him, unclenching his hand, skating it up to grab at Sasuke’s bare hip, and Sasuke comes down his throat with a shout.  The feeling wells up around them, and the white landscape around them glitters-- and, as Sasuke shakes, he loses his hold on the doujutsu.  As he falls back into real time, he hears Naruto’s gasp.

Suddenly he is crouched on the ground near the lip of a basin, staring into Naruto’s face from several feet away.

Shocked blue eyes stare back at him, and for a split second Sasuke lets himself notice their surroundings-- the burnt earth around them; several figures in Konoha gear gathered on the perimeter; the broken, bloody skin of Naruto’s face-- but then he’s back in, breathing deeply, mouth pressed to Naruto’s neck, holding Naruto to his chest with one arm like a steel bar against the small of Naruto’s back.

“Not yet,” Sasuke says.

“Okay,” Naruto says, voice thin from the shock, but his arm comes up around Sasuke’s shoulders. “Okay.”  

They breathe together for a long moment, heart rates settling. 

They shift faintly-- Naruto running his cheek along Sasuke's, Sasuke touching his lips to Naruto's jaw.  When finally their mouths touch again, Naruto kisses him chastely and then leans their foreheads together.  "We should go back now," he says.  

Sasuke returns the kiss, close-mouthed and calm.  "You know what I want."   _What you want_ , he doesn't say.  Naruto lets out a hard breath through his nose.  

Sasuke drops his forehead to the shoulder of Naruto's ruined arm, pressing a kiss to his neck, then to his shoulder, their long, strange history jangling between them.  

"It's time," he says.  

After a moment, Naruto threads his fingers through Sasuke's hair, and Sasuke feels him nod.  He's still nodding when he pushes on Sasuke's shoulder and then follows him down to the ground.  He pulls off his shirt and steps out of his shorts while Sasuke pulls the last of his own clothes off.  He waits for Naruto to kneel over him before rolling to his stomach.  

Naruto's left hand runs over Sasuke's shoulder, down his back, over the swell of his ass.  He caresses Sasuke's ass again, letting his thumb fall into the crevice.  He feels Naruto's uncertainty, feels him on the verge of asking if this is okay, so he rests his head on the remains of his left arm and reaches behind himself, spreading his thighs, to push Naruto's hand against his entrance.  Naruto resists, cautious ( _experienced_ , Sasuke's mind supplies), but preparation is hardly necessary in the Tsukuyomi; Sasuke is ready by willing it, and Naruto's fingers slide easily into him.

“Oh, fuck,” Naruto says, head drooping as though just the thought of Sasuke’s slickness on his fingers will finish him. “ _Fuck._ ”  

“Focus,” Sasuke says, and he’s chagrined to hear the shortness of his breath.  He feels like he’s been waiting lifetimes to have Naruto inside him, and it’s possible that he has been, that he has been waiting literal entire lifetimes.  “Dobe--”

Naruto laughs breathlessly and pulls his hand away.  

He shifts closer, balanced on his knees, then deftly spreads Sasuke with the same hand he uses to guide his erection into Sasuke's hole.  He slides in, still slow, but easy, perfect, with a burn that starts a glow through Sasuke's whole body.  He moves as much as he can, knees inching outward, until he can let go of himself-- then he props himself on his hand, bending over Sasuke, and seats himself fully.  

"Sasuke," he says, two slow syllables in a voice of reverence.

He drops his forehead against Sasuke's shoulder. Sasuke braces his right arm against the ground, his knees against the white ground, and pushes up, lifting his hips, and Naruto adjusts, and then they're moving together-- always so in sync, even in opposition, bound together deep below the surface. Naruto thrusts into him, again and again, running his open mouth over his shoulder, along his trapezius, over the back of his neck.  He doesn't bite, but Sasuke can feel his teeth.  Sasuke arches back against him.  

"Can you come again," Naruto growls against Sasuke's ear, and it's a strange echo of that other Naruto, that Naruto filled with rage, only now he's driving into Sasuke's body, trailing wetness on Sasuke's skin.  

"Yes."  

In the space of the Tsukuyomi, Sasuke could come again and again, Naruto could stay hard forever, fucking him forever.  An irresponsible daydream-- Naruto has a country to protect, and they both have families, and dead languages won't learn themselves-- but it lights Sasuke's body on fire with deranged hunger and possessiveness.

"Fuck," Sasuke chokes.  

Naruto makes a desperate sound.  Then he leans forward, letting Sasuke take all of his weight, and reaches down to take Sasuke's erection in hand.

"I want your come," he growls, stroking him.  There it is: the animal thing.  Sasuke shakes underneath him.  "I'm gonna come inside you."

"Yes," Sasuke hisses.  He can feel it in the air around them, the swell, Naruto's orgasm filling him just like his cock is.  "Yes."

"Give it to me," says Naruto.  "Give it--"  And then he's bowing against Sasuke, hips stilling, and Sasuke bends back against him, pressing their heads together hard enough to hurt, and they come together, Naruto snarling something wordless, hand tight on Sasuke's cock.  

As before, the climax shakes something loose, shorting out the Tsukuyomi.  

They clutch for a moment, psychically, to their imaginary heartbeats, to the feel of each other's bodies-- but then the white of the landscape expands, grows hotter, and is gone.  

They come back to themselves in the real world.  

Naruto gazes at Sasuke from a blood-streaked face, chest heaving.  They hold each other's gazes for a moment-- Konoha shinobi moving in their periphery-- before Naruto's eyes roll back in his head, and he passes out, slumped against the floor of the basin.

 

+

 

The next time Sasuke sees Naruto fully conscious, it is three months later, at his actual apartment in Aoyama.  "Hey," Naruto says, grinning crookedly when Sasuke opens the door.  His wounds are gone, of course, and he's holding a duffel bag with his right hand, although it's bandaged all the way up into the sleeve of his orange t-shirt to hide the discoloration.  He shrugs when Sasuke lifts an eyebrow, smile turning shy.  "You were right," he says.  "I need a vacation."

  
  
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